Class 5 final assignment!

I know it's been a while, but I'm posting now! I've been updating my website a lot and am slowly moving my blog to that site. That blog will be more of a current events and headlines type of blog, I'll still keep this one for art though! Head on over there to see my latest post about getting to take a tour of Pixar!!!! It was such an amazing experience, and I've never been so happy in my life.

Here's my last assignment from class 5. Since I haven't posted any progress so far, you can basically see it at its finished state!

Last Assignment for Introduction to Acting!

This is it! The final assignment for my introduction to acting class! It's amazing how far we've all come! I looked at my first lip sync from college, and it's embarassing how bad I was, and had absolutely no idea. I can't believe I actually applied for jobs with that old reel haha.

We're Getting There!

Slowly but surely, if you keep chugging at it, and work in small sections, you'll get there! This week I had to continue out my blocking pass for Jules, and then start converting him into spline. Spline is always such a daunting process, it can be extremely discouraging and really make you feel like you've spent all of these endless hours and gotten no where. I decided to go at my shot one chunk at a time, and really refine everything. It definitely helps, and makes you actually feel like you got somewhere. This is what I've got so far!

Lip Sync Blocking

I started blocking out my lip sync for this assignment! Jules is working behind the counter at a tanning salon. This is what I turned in so far!

NesCafe Commercial

We submitted to another commercial contest again! This time it's for NesCafe Coffee. It was quite the experience! For the first video, the basic premise was to pass it forward. Ashley Jane from http://www.artsyash.com/ and I were passing out coffee to people walking by us at Lake Eola in Downtown Orlando. On the first cup that we handed out, we wrote inspiring words to make peoples mornings better on it. Every person that took a coffee, had to write something nice on another cup, for the next person! It was so nice spreading joy, and so many people were affected by the kind words from others!

Our next video was about inspiring young people to make a change in the world. For this video, we started out at with Rebecca Hodges from https://www.facebook.com/Rebecca-Hodges-Hodges-Film-365776613435485/, and she wakes up, has a cup of coffee, and then decides to take on the day, and do something amazing! She then goes on to cook pancakes. And I mean a ton of pancakes. It's pancake after pancake after pancake. Once the container is full, she drives off to downtown Orlando, and hands them out to people around town who aren't as fortunate to have daily meals. It was pretty fun to work on this shoot. We definitely ghetto rigged the car up. Since we didn't have any sliders or steadicams, I drove the car while Ashley Jane sat on the trunk, and filmed Rebecca walking by. My first ghetto rig experience! This shoot was such a satisfying shoot to work on. Everyone was so grateful and sweet for the pancakes. It definitely changes your view on helping out the less fortunate that's for sure! It was so amazing hearing everyones stories too, and what they used to do, and how they got to where they were today. 

Finished Shot!

For the past 2 weeks, I've been working on splining out and polishing my bellhop shot. Here's what it looks like so far since I turned it in! There's a big difference between the blocking story ideas, and what it inevitably came down to.

Pantomime Blocking

It's been an extremely busy week for me! I've been on a lot of fun projects recently. My two production friends Ashley Jane http://www.artsyash.com/ and Rebecca Hodges https://www.facebook.com/Rebecca-Hodges-Hodges-Film-365776613435485/ and I created a commercial for a Mountain Dew contest. The theme of the project was, "It doesn't exist until you dew it." So we went out and filmed a bunch of super fun stuff, I'll be sure to post it once the contest is over! I also helped out on another shoot this past weekend where we got to film a chef make instructional cooking videos. I've learned that the best shoots are the ones with food...you get to taste it all! I added some photos below as a sneak peak for our commercial! We're basically an ad for Lake Eola now.

My assignment for Animation Mentor this week is blocking out our pantomime assignment. As I was working along, I would get all these new ideas for actions, so it's pretty much nothing like my planning. I'm digging it so far though!

Class 4 First Assignment!

I just turned in my first assignment for the new class! This is introduction to acting, and our first assignment is to complete a pantomime animation. Pantomime is anything with a change of feelings. So basically contrasting between sleepy, and startled, angry and complacent, or even scared then brave. I went through a lot of different ideas this week. Basically I fianlly came out with one, where I used the Stella character as a bell hop. She's delivering customers luggage to their room, but while she waits at one door, she decides to play with a teddy bear. All of the sudden, the door opens, and she doesn't realize it. When she finally notices, she jumps up, contrasting to a serious business personality, and hands them their luggage. The whole time she's hiding the bear behind her back. Here is my quick and dirty sketches, and 2 poses of the contrasting reactions. Next week we'll get to start blocking!

Back at it!

I'm officially back in class! I'm in class 4 now, which is an introduction to acting class. I've already had my first mentor meet up, and I'm in love with my new mentor! As I mentioned before, he worked at Pixar since the original Toy Story, but what's great is that he also is a stop motion artist. He also worked on the Nightmare Before Christmas, which is super cool! I can't even begin to imagine what that must be like. But I've already got ideas for my next assignments, and I'm gonna get straight to work!

As for my professional life, I'm still saving up money getting ready to move out West! I got all my photos back from New York, so I figured I would share a few right now! Obviously Ashley Jane (my director from Celestial) and I did a lot of sightseeing, hanging out, and pure best friend bonding.

Happy Holidays!

Well, it's been 3 months since I've updated any assignments, or posted new art. Mostly because I took a term off from Animation Mentor, and started my new job! I got hired on as a freelance artist for a company called FilmScape Productions. My title is Animator, Cinematographer, and Editor. So I basically get to do it all! Animate, film, and edit, all the things I've been growing up doing! I just got back from a shoot in New York City, which was an amazing adventure. I got to shoot for a company called Monster Media, and they were hired on by Cannon cameras for events on the street all week. It was such a cool opportunity to be able to travel for my job. Although my title is animator, I've mostly been editing for all this time. I'll be posting an editing reel on my website soon, so be on the look out for that!

I am so pumped to start Animation Mentor again in a few weeks. I will be on class four, which is introduction to acting. It's going to be pretty different from all my mechanics classes, and a lot of work. But my mentor for this class is named David Tart and he used to work for Pixar! You can see his imdb here http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0850716/ I'm sad to say I didn't get around to fixing most of my animations in these past few months while taking a break. I've been focusing on learning After Effects, and more about cameras for work. Which put a huge set back in brushing up my 3d skills. But at least I've been doing some 2d motion graphics stuff with work! But I also found out that I get to go on a trip to San Francisco next April. So hopefully my new mentor knows a person there that can give me a tour of Pixar. That would be my life dream. Just to even enter their campus. Fingers crossed!!

Since I've already talked so much about myself which is highly unordinary, and it's just me killing time avoiding fixing up my resume, here's the most recent art that I've done lately! This took me a good few months to paint. One of hte biggest projects I've done yet. My boyfriend wanted me to make him a personalized cooler, because all of his friends got some made for them. I volunteered for it not having a clue how much work it would be. You first had to sand down the entire thing, just to get the paint to stick. Then I primed it all with spray paint, painted each and every side of the cooler (2 months for that job alone because I'm such a perfectionist) and then seal it all with mod podge and more sealant spray. Holy cow was it rough. But I finally got it done! Each side has to do with sports, and his favorite Florida teams. He has a lot of them clearly. I could totally start a business with these coolers haha.

I wish you all some happy holidays! And I'll be back soon with more Animation Mentor assignments!

Final Assignment!

It's the last week!!! I made it through class 3!! Now it's time for a break, render out my shots, sit down with a glass of wine, and do nothing but apply to jobs until my next class starts in January. It's amazing that I pushed through this class while working so many hours on Tough Enough. I pulled a good 4 different all nighters on numerous saturdays, and I think the only thing that got me through it was taking it one day at a time. When I looked at the big picture and saw all that I had to do still, that's when I got stressed out. So I decided to worry about the now, and plan to work on my shots every day when I got home. Even though that happened probably only twice, I got through it and didn't fail! Below is my most recent submission. It's another pass at the sword fight.

But I'll be back soon to post my final reel! We have to have all of our corrections and fixes done by Friday. I already got one rendered, so let's see how far I can get done by then!

Sword Fight

Almost done! I'm on week 11 out of 12! We're so close to finishing this term, and then it's time for a break for me. I'm not going to start my acting class until January, so I'll be perfecting all of my previous shots until then to add to my portfolio. Here is my newest assignment, a sword fight! Sticking with the pirate theme, this imp is playing with a sword, and then loses it. 

Pirates Under Attack

Here's my latest version of Stewart on a pirate ship that's under attack!

Under Attack Blocking

For our most recent assignment, I started out blocking on my newest shot. I stuck with the pirate theme, and this is what happens after the imp throws the cannon ball over board. I have Stewart sleeping below deck, the ship rocks from the attack, and he awakes freaking out, running over to the cannon, and pushing it out the window preparing for attack. What he doesn't realize is how heavy it is, and how slippery the floor is, so it takes him a bit to actually get his goal accomplished.

Because I worked 60 hours for the show reality Tough Enough this week, I ended up having to pull another all nighter in order to just get this shot done. But as I was working through the night, I think I finally had that aha moment while animating. My last mentor would always talk in class about how people don't get animation right away. Some people get it within a month, and others take years to finally have that aha moment, where they finally realize what they're doing. It's no longer a rotate this and translate that, it's not a shoulder leads the forearm which leads the wrist. But it's more of a creative outlet where the finger could end up being the joint that drives the entire body. It's very enlightening once you have that moment. And this moment is probably the smallest base of the giant uphill realization that is yet to come. But all in all, here is my shot!

Final Shot!

This past week was our last time to turn in our first shot for class 3! I'm still going to go back and revise it even more based on my mentors most recent critique, but we have to move on for now. I'm excited to start this second shot because I feel like I have such a better foundation in blocking now, that it's getting easier and easier to comprehend all of the principles of animation. From everything moving in arcs to squash and stretch, I finally feel that I am actually aware of it all while working out my shot. But for now, this is how my first cannon ball attack turned out!